For A Long Time
by Dr. Breifs Cat
Summary: Tony has outmaneuvered a lot of people, but he's never managed to blackmail himself before. The Iron Man ponders Rescue. IIM #27, COMIC-VERSE


**For A Long Time**

The flight to Tokyo is going to take a long time, even with the new armor. He doesn't want to outclass Rhodey too badly, either, partially because there's no fun in a race that you win too easily and partially because he doesn't want to hit Japan alone. They talk. Not a lot, because relaying readings back and forth is only so interesting and they both have other things on their minds right now, but a decent enough portion of the flight is passed with conversation. It's the silent parts that are rough.

Tony is more nervous that he wants to admit. Nervous about heading into a situation that he can't predict an outcome for yet. Nervous because Rhodey decided to tell a hell of a downer story before they left. Nervous because his new armor is one of the more amazing things his mind has ever produced, but the first time out is always a little nerve-wracking. He hasn't put this one through its paces yet. He fell out of the habit of practicing and testing his armor years ago. While he is confidant that this armor is every bit as good as he thinks it is, there is still that voice in the back of his head asking, "What if you're wrong?" Tony is very, very practiced at ignoring that voice. He's usually right. He knows it and the voice knows it and after a while doubting himself starts to seem like a waste of energy.

Unfortunately, he had been wrong. Spectacularly so, and the world had been paying for it. Tony had his own penance, too, of course. His lost memories, his lost company, his lost money-these things are all a punishment for being wrong. But his wrongs put the world in danger, not just himself and his immediate friends, but the whole damn world. So that doubting voice...it's just a little bit harder to ignore than usual. He's going into a situation not knowing what he'll find and very aware that he could screw it up. He actually doesn't really want to go.

And yet, here he is, jetting across the Pacific a couple hundred thousand miles above the surface of the ocean in an oppressively silent tin can.

Back in Oklahoma, Pepper is undergoing surgery so that she can have a tin can of her very own. While he actually doesn't really want that to be even happening, if he had to choose between watching over her with Mrs. Arbogast or flying across the world to investigate this latest hullabaloo, he'd pick the Sooner State in a second. (While its neither here nor there, he really can't believe Bambi let him call her by her first name so much. Maybe he'd grown up in her eyes and she'd started seeing him as an equal instead of a particularly disappointing son.)

What he would like to ask Pepper right now, which he can't because she's unconscious, but anyway, is "What if you're wrong?" What if his concern for her safety isn't a bunch of crap? What if he does have something to lose?

What if she gets transported to some mystical other realm where her armor doesn't even work and she doesn't know how to repair it and it becomes her bright and shiny coffin?

What then?

Because that stuff happens. And it doesn't happen because you want it to happen or because you head into danger, it happens because it happens. Because when you take on a costume and a code name, you are in for a world of crap. It doesn't matter that she aims to be an EMT instead of an WMD. She won't be safe because she's in his armor, she'll be a target because she's in his armor. Right now, she's seeing nothing but the shiny parts. The glory. The pride of knowing that you saved lives. And if he tries to tell her about the friends that die, the trauma of the things you see, the fear that you are going to die right _now_ and it is going to be _bloody, _she's not going to listen because that's not going to be _her_. She's going to save lives while he fights. She's going to be safe.

What a bunch of **crap**.

She saved his life, she says. She broke Maria and Natasha out of HAMMER custody, she says. She's a hero and he can't take that away from her, she says. Well, excuse him if he doesn't see the safety inherent in _those_ actions.

Bambi apparently didn't get the memo that she was supposed to be on his side. Damn paperless offices. It isn't lovely and he hasn't wanted something like this for a long time. If he wanted it a long time ago, he'd have made it a long time ago. As it stands now, just building the suit is going to put him into debt. _Debt._ Somehow, he doesn't imagine Pepper would find that an acceptable reason to put off making a Rescue Mk II for a few months.

And the thing is, it isn't that he doesn't understand. He can't stop being the Iron Man. He's tried. The Iron Man is a truer self than Anthony Stark. He used to keep the Stark identity around because Iron Man had a comparatively limited realm of influence. He had things he could contribute to the world only as a billionaire inventor. The lines have become blurred, he isn't sure he can separate the man from the man-made anymore. The Iron Man is his greatest creation. It is what his life had been building towards all along, he just hadn't seen it until his own land mines nearly killed him. He listens to Pepper talk and she's saying the same thing - years of her life spent, years of her life culminating towards _this_.

It isn't just the lifestyle, either, or the way your sense of who you really are gets muddled once you take on a different name and start doing different, outlandish, incredible things. He understands that specific suit, too.

Tony can see the appeal in people looking at a creation of his and not seeing a bomb. And maybe he'd like to know that when people look at him, they don't see a man that makes land mines anymore, they see a man that makes machines that improve their lives with absolutely no secret dark purpose. And maybe making something that he knows isn't going to shoot at anyone or explode at anyone or become a remote-control tool of assassins might feel good. And feel good in a genuine, lasting way. He's made things that can't be weaponized, things like home computers and cell phones and toasters, but it's not the same thing. Tony makes them because he wants to go online or call someone or make toast and what's on the market just isn't what he's looking for. He builds what he wants and then lets the company mass produce and sell them. He's revolutionized the way people talk on the phone, but who cares about that? That doesn't mean anything. Revolutionizing the way people look at superheroes - that would mean something. Making the public see that heroes are there to save them, not cause gross property damage and disappear with a wacko in tow, that would_ mean_ something. That would mean something in the 'go to sleep and don't have any nightmares' sense. That would be feeling good about himself as though he was a decent human being, and not in the ego trip sense.

He's wanted to be a man that doesn't make weapons for a long time. More than that, he's wanted to be _seen_ as a man who doesn't make weapons for a long time. Even more than that, he's wanted to be a man who can look at innocuous, innocent things and _not_ have his first thought be how to make them kill people. Somedays, it's hard to believe that the one of the more deadly weapons in his arsenal began life as a flashlight. A _flashlight_.

Tony has wanted for a long time to be a man who creates things for the betterment of the world. He's wanted for a long time to create something that is good. Spectacularly and purely good.

But he's never done that.

And even if he'd tried to, his fever dream imaginings of goodness had never included a suit of armor for Pepper Potts. She is good, spectacularly and purely so. And while he wants to envelope her and protect her and share everything that he is with her...this is not what he had in mind. Tony can't really fathom what possessed him to think that this was a good idea or why he promised to make her a new one. With his other decisions, he understands. He knows why he chose to support Super Human Registration. He can piece it together from the news and the legislation and himself and he understands why it was the right thing to do. But there are no clues left behind when it comes to Pepper and her suit. He doesn't know why he did it or why he promised to do it again. He understands that in order to live, he needed the parts Rhodey stripped from the original Rescue suit. But why Pepper? Why make a promise?

If he breaks this promise, Pepper will never forgive him.

Tony has outmaneuvered a lot of people, but he's never managed to blackmail himself before.

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Disclaimers: Iron Man and all related concepts © Marvel


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